codon

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A sequence of three adjacent nucleotides constituting the genetic code that determines the insertion of a specific amino acid in a polypeptide chain during protein synthesis or the signal to stop protein synthesis.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A sequence of three adjacent nucleotides, which encode for a specific amino acid during protein synthesis, or translation. Three special codons, called "stop codons," signal protein synthesis to terminate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. a sequence of three nucleotides in a genome or a DNA or messenger RNA molecule, which specifies the incorporation of one amino acid or is a stop signal, during the biosynthesis of proteins. Codons occur within the protein-coding segments of the DNA or RNA genome of living organisms. The amino acid sequence of proteins synthesized on ribosomes is thus determined by the sequence of the nucleotides in the genome.

People with a so-called codon 13 mutation of KRAS lived a median of 7.6 months, and lived four months before their tumors progressed, while taking a combination of Erbitux and chemotherapy, the researchers found.

Indeed, the search for and documentation of uniquely molecular patterns, such as codon bias and selective sweeps, has, if anything, elevated the focal explanatory power of natural selection in evolutionary studies.